Last week, we finished our 2 week Japanese Carpentry Real Construction Workshop. From the inception, our goal was always incredibly lofty — to build an ishibatate guesthouse from the ground up with a group of 22 students. Somehow, we surpassed our goal. We finished the frame and even installed the roof decking. I’m still reeling from the experience.
Japanese Timber Frame Goes Up!
This has been our most ambitious project and complex workshop to date. The months of planning and preparation paid off. The students were amazing, and the Soma Kosha crew held it all together beautifully. Each day was incredibly dense with activity, and it was hard to keep up with everything happening at once. It wasn’t chaotic, just busy in the best sense of the word. It was inspiring to see how quickly we got into a good workflow. The motivation was palpable, and everyone’s passion was infectious. Everyone wanted to do their best work.
It’s difficult to write about this kind of thing in retrospect because it’s hard to capture the energy of the whole experience in a few words. In the beginning, I had doubts entering into this project and workshop, but now I feel like anything is possible. I’m going to ride this wave of optimism as long as possible.
Ultimately, I’m feeling really grateful. Grateful to our amazing teachers and friends, grateful to new and returning students. Grateful for the work and even the weather for allowing us to make steady progress every day.
There are so many unknowns with a project and workshop like this, too many to count. It’s amazing that it all worked out in the end. I suspect the ripples from these two weeks will continue spreading outward for a long time after this.
